FugitiveVisions
Junior Member
Re: New base for the Type 094 subs?
What is the national strategy of building 3rd generation stealth planes? Where is the public debate about black projects that eat away billion of dollars? Where was the public knowledge regarding the phantom Iraqi special weapons programs and who knows what the US war plans are for Iran and Taiwan? Where is the disclosure about people going from the private sector into the public sector and acting in the interest of their alumi corporation?
Public disclosure is fine, as long as it stops with policy. If public disclosure affects policy, then it stops. America has no problems announcing every little details about the performance of the F-22, because the plane has no peers, therefore revealing its performance does no detriment to policy but rather enhances it. But during the cold war, where was the disclosure of the F/A-117?
For China, the reason for non-disclosure is the same. Being a technologically weaker party, aspects about its military must be secret to provide an element of surprise. Surprise is an element that not even stronger nations can lose, let alone weaker nations.
Western governments operate in the open. National executives and their cabinets have to generate papers that define national strategy for debate in their parliaments or Congress, as the case may be. Weapons purchases have to be justified by the strategic aims in these papers, and lawmakers can and do challenge the military authorities to justify the need for expensive systems. It is a largely open process and everyone in the entire world is able to watch the debate. Aside from certain technologies and actual war plans, very little is done in secret. I could crash this site with the volumes of procurement documents, aircraft and missile manuals, military training manuals, every instruction under the sun, that is considered to be public knowledge. You can buy an F/A-18E/F Natops manual on CD for under ten bucks on line! Every enthsiast should have oneWhen we sell systems to Israel or Saudi Arabia there is passionate public debate in Congress whether to authorize these sales and what equipment we should allow out of our borders. Editorial writers write critical, sometimes harshly critical, op-ed pieces on policy for their readers to consider. It is a very public process.
With China by comparison nobody knows what the debate is. Nobody knows who China considers a threat and why and how their arms purchases fit into their national strategy. Of course China has no obligation to relay this information to the world, but then it has to consider that absent some good information, her neighbors may assume the worst intentions from her, which under some unforeseen set of circumstances could lead to a preventable tragedy at worst, or a lot of wasted resources at the very least. When you have to second guess a potential opponent one tends to want to err on the side of safety, costing you money and potentially angering your adversary.
What is the national strategy of building 3rd generation stealth planes? Where is the public debate about black projects that eat away billion of dollars? Where was the public knowledge regarding the phantom Iraqi special weapons programs and who knows what the US war plans are for Iran and Taiwan? Where is the disclosure about people going from the private sector into the public sector and acting in the interest of their alumi corporation?
Public disclosure is fine, as long as it stops with policy. If public disclosure affects policy, then it stops. America has no problems announcing every little details about the performance of the F-22, because the plane has no peers, therefore revealing its performance does no detriment to policy but rather enhances it. But during the cold war, where was the disclosure of the F/A-117?
For China, the reason for non-disclosure is the same. Being a technologically weaker party, aspects about its military must be secret to provide an element of surprise. Surprise is an element that not even stronger nations can lose, let alone weaker nations.
